


Sharpe's Coffin

by InkSiren



Series: Sharpe's Fanfic [5]
Category: Sharpe (TV), Sharpe - All Media Types, Sharpe Series - Bernard Cornwell
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Missing Scene, Sort Of, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27946937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSiren/pseuds/InkSiren
Summary: Lucille holds onto the man she's just shot and tries to help save his life.
Relationships: Lucille Castineau/Richard Sharpe
Series: Sharpe's Fanfic [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034673
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Sharpe's Coffin

Almost as soon as she shoots him, Lucille regrets it. 

It’s not guilt, she knows it was self defense and she’s had every reason to think that this man killed her brother, but she does feel regret because in her gut she knows this Englishman frantically trying to help Sharpe is telling the truth and she very well may have just shot someone not deserving of such a horrible death.

She’d filled the gun with nails, and she cannot see where they’ve buried themselves. 

She has never truly wanted to kill anyone, even after losing her husband and her brother. She just wants to be safe, and she believes deep down that that’s all these two men want as well.

Maybe that’s why she’s able to immediately drop the gun and help, even with the uninjured soldier manhandling and yelling at her.

She finds herself holding tightly to the man she’s injured, to this Sharpe, and his arms are pinned over his chest as though he needs his own strength to help keep him down. As he bucks and twists in her hands, as she holds his head close to her chest to try and still him, she can see why. He has a powerful body, and in the stimulation of pain he must be exerting great restraint not to bruise her much worse. 

His arms are crossed over his chest like a corpse, and his breathing is harsh. His head is warm and sweaty against her chest and she hugs him tighter, whispering apologies. She can feel the pulse thundering through his body, rippling out from the arteries that normally serve as its banks, and she thinks she can feel him fighting to live. 

She thinks too, that he has a good chance of winning that fight. His will is strong, and the heat in his body is almost overbearing: the fervor of a fire stoked up, not one beaten close to embers. 

She has held the dying before, and she is certain he is not dying. Not yet, at least. 

That heat is what she holds onto, especially when the last nail is finally gone and he sags in her arms in relief, his muscles slackening with an alarming suddenness. As she lets his head down, she can see a rapid pulse running up both sides of his throat. 

His mouth is open and he is breathing like a chick newly broken free of its egg. 

He’s nearly as sweaty too, his body spent. His arms are limp where they rest across his breast, and Lucille glances at bloody nails and thinks how they’d do just as well to seal the coffin she’d almost sent him to. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers once more, and moves to clean and bandage a leg blessedly still bleeding. Richard’s arms remain crossed as she works, his head tipped back, his breathing slowing down. He is bleeding, and that is good because it will flush out the dirt of the nails with the grim sign that his heart is truly still beating. 

As she bandages and dabs and gets the injury under control, she realizes that she really does not want that heart to stop. She’s felt it fight valiantly, and she grows sad thinking of using nails baptized in his lifeblood on his burial rites. 

She doesn’t know it yet, but she will not have to for many, many years.

By then, two of her own children will have inherited the blood she wipes so carefully off of her fingers now.

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, retconning the show's ending for them since the book is much happier. Richard deserves to retire and not be alone dammit.


End file.
